Sock ramblings

I think I desperately want to be a sock knitter, but something about it terrifies me. Maybe it's the things that people have said about turning a heel being a right of passage, or maybe it's just that it requires working with teeny tiny double pointed needles and super thin thread. So for my first sock, I'm going to try the Monkey Socks by the queen of awesome socks, Cookie A., which might sound overambitious, but I don't think there are any new stitch techniques to learn and the lace pattern doesn't look any more complicated than stuff I've done before.

My other problem revolves around maybe not having enough yarn. I found some really nice powder blue Patons Kroy 3 Ply (no link because Google seems to think that the Patons site has malware) in my grandmother's stash. There's one skein of 262 yards per 50g, but the Monkey pattern requires 360 yards.



I have three choices. The first is just to make those socks a little shorter, and possibly being able to finish them with the one skein. This would be ok, except I'm terrible with figuring out how much yarn it takes to make something, so I wouldn't know how much to shorten them by. The second option is to use this other unlabeled yarn of a similar colour and weight when I run out of the 3 ply stuff. Unfortunately, this other yarn is 4 ply instead of 3 ply, so a little heavier, and it's also an ever-so-slightly darker colour. I suppose I'll just have to swatch to see how different they really are, or I could remove one of the plies from the heavier yarn, but that would be a pain in the butt. The third option is just to buy some new sock yarn. Seems silly when I have a whole skein of that stuff already... but I'm going to my local yarn store today (Romni Wools, nom nom nom!), so I guess I'll check it out. I need to pick up some Cascade Fixation anyway...

It seems silly for me to start something new when I have three projects in the works right now, but I just have so much inspiration! (Cue corny romantic music.) I'm currently working on a baby blanket (using up that fuzzy green yarn, yay!) for my colleague whose fiance is having a baby, the stupid frickin' candy apple shrug (should I just rip it out at this point?), and the circles rug from the Crochet Me book. I should probably slow down and get some real work done... Oh, speaking of which, I just made a breakthrough in my research which will save me days of work, so I'm in pretty high spirits. I wish I'd figured it out weeks ago, but, alas, such is the nature of research.